Christmas is a great time to discover new books. After all the frenzy of preparing and anticipating, by the afternoon of Christmas Day, we are finally able to just rest, relax, and enjoy a time when few stores are open and almost no one is expected to be at work or school. Such was the case for young Emma Round from Emma Round and the Holy Rowlings by Kenneth Alan Moe. Emma’s Christmastime reading of the first three books represents the beginning of a lifelong journey that finds her interacting with the series in a revolutionary way.
Please enjoy this exclusive excerpt from Emma Round and the Holy Rowlings, in which Emma discovers the magic of Harry Potter.
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By Kenneth Alan Moe
From Emma’s perspective, the most significant development in fourth grade came over the winter holiday break when she began reading Harry Potter. She had known about the Potter phenomenon, of course. Classmates talked about the boy wizard with enthusiasm, and in September she had watched a segment of 60 Minutes when Lesley Stahl interviewed Joanne Rowling.
The winsome author succeeded in whetting Emma’s interest until she told Lesley Stahl that she approved of cracking the spines of books while reading. Emma did not like this at all, and she would have written Rowling off as a crackpot, but then she said that publishers had rejected her manuscript for the first book because it was ‘far too long for children,’ and this caught Emma’s rebellious fancy. She took that editorial criticism as a personal challenge. Eventually she would succumb to the call of the young wizard, she knew, but the inertia of daily life held her back from carefully opening the first book. And then at Christmas, the means, motive, and opportunity came together in one place.
Emma laughed knowingly after reading the opening page of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. She knew the Dursleys all too well, from her own neighborhood. Though her family had recently moved to Scottsdale, she retained a Phoenix native’s bias toward the place, often referring to it as Snotsdale. In her mind she meant that epithet to apply only to North Scottsdale, anything north of McDonald Drive, where she in fact now lived. Old Town and South Scottsdale, however, retained their artistic and neighborly charms. In that moment of connection between Surrey and her city, she knew also that she was hooked by J. K. Rowling’s first novel.
The sun-drenched world of saguaro and prickly pear cactuses where she lived bore no resemblance to the grassy plains of England or the mountains of Scotland. North Scottsdale and Little Whinging looked nothing alike. The artsy Old Town Scottsdale was shiny and new compared with Diagon Alley. Yet in the recesses of her young mind Emma recognized the Dickensian world created for the Harry Potter novels. Her memory played a magic trick upon her consciousness to convince her that she had been there; she had shopped in Diagon Alley; she had lived in a dorm at Hogwarts.
Jared, three years older, had been given hardbound Scholastic editions of the first three Potter books for Christmas but was in no hurry to read them, so Emma appropriated the first one and then devoured all three in a marathon session. She holed up in her bedroom, stopping only for calls of nature and to fix sandwiches and milk to consume in her room until she was finished reading. She savored the deliciousness of the literary excursion.
Then she returned the books to Jared. “You definitely need to read these before going back to school,” she told him.
Jared took the books and examined them, fanning through pages looking for stains and creases. “Are you sure you read these? I know you’ve been hiding in your room, but were these just cover for doing something else?”
“What a weird thing to say,” Emma responded. “Why would you say something like that?”
“Because they’re in pristine condition,” Jared said. “They look brand new. You can’t tell that anyone has been reading them.”
“Books are my friends,” said Emma. “I treat them with care and respect. In this case, they belong to you, and I always try extra hard to be careful with other people’s property.”
“Yeah, that’s true. I appreciate that about you,” Jared said.
Emma couldn’t let it go at that. “If you don’t believe that I read all of them, ask me a question. Open one of them at random and ask me about what you find on that page.”
“No, I believe you,” said Jared. “But after I’ve read them, I may challenge you to a trivia contest.”
“I can’t wait,” she said. “But after you’ve read them, I want to read them again.”
Emma Round and the Holy Rowlings by Kenneth Alan Moe is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.
